Transit officials reopened the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge early Tuesday after completing a new half-mile detour that connects the East Span to the Yerba Buena Tunnel and repairing a crack on the bridge. The 73-year-old bridge was closed from Thursday through Labor Day weekend so crews could remove a 300-foot section near Yerba Buena Island and replace it with a new double-deck section as part of a long-planned seismic upgrade. But on Saturday, crews inspecting the bridge discovered a 2-inch-thick steel I-bar had cracked halfway through, said California Department of Transportation spokesman Bart Ney. The crack caused officials to mobilize additional contractors and materials and to assign repair crews.

SAN FRANCISCO - The troubled new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge will not open over Labor Day weekend as planned, the California Transportation Commission announced Monday. As state legislators were being briefed about the bridge timetable and a new investigative report, the commission released a written statement saying that “the previously scheduled Labor Day opening of the new East Span ... has been postponed.” Thirty-two bolts on the new span -- set to replace the old expanse of bridge, which was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake -- broke in March.

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge reopened to traffic Monday night, the California Highway Patrol said. The first cars, led by CHP cruisers with flashing lights, started rolling across the bridge toward San Francisco about 10:15 p.m. Motorists honked their horns by the toll plaza on the Oakland side of the bridge, according to television news reports. The bridge had been closed since Wednesday so that workers could put the final touches on a new 2.2-mile span from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island.

As Caltrans officials call for criminal charges against a former technician accused of falsifying bridge testing data, a top state senator is pressing for a broader investigation of the transportation agency itself. "Failure to conduct reliable inspection tests on the foundations of bridges, freeway ramps, retaining walls, and other structures may erode the public's confidence in Caltrans' management of the state highway and bridge program," State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord)

It's not often that a city gets a chance to correct a mistake as big as the Embarcadero Freeway, the massive double-decked highway that is one of the few eyesores in San Francisco--a town otherwise famous for its scenery and the collective good sense to preserve it. As originally envisioned by California's mega-builders of the 1950s, the Embarcadero was to link the Golden Gate Bridge (U.S.

SAN FRANCISCO Two engineers who say their safety concerns about the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge were suppressed by Caltrans higher-ups told a state Senate committee Friday that they nevertheless believe the new eastern span of the structure is safe. California Department of Transportation director Malcolm Dougherty, meanwhile, reluctantly conceded that "there has to have been mistakes made," but insisted that no coercion had occurred and that "if we had any concerns about safety on the bridge, we would not have opened it in September.

A man who police believe is mentally ill was captured Friday after leading officers on a high-speed chase across the Bay Area and, once stopped, dousing himself and the car he was driving with gasoline. The incident in the morning rush hour closed an eight-mile stretch of southbound U.S. Highway 101 south of San Francisco for four hours, but authorities said the backup was reduced because traffic was relatively light on the long Fourth of July holiday weekend.

The California Department of Transportation failed to adequately manage the ballooning costs of building a new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, according to a state auditor's report released Wednesday. The report by State Auditor Elaine M. Howle found that the estimated cost for Caltrans' Toll Bridge Seismic Retrofit Program, which covers seven state-owned bridges, has risen by $3.2 billion to $8.3 billion since its budget was set in April 2001. Much of the increase, $2.

Gov. Jerry Brown weighed in on the latest controversy surrounding the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge this week, but this one had nothing to do with safety concerns or cracking bolts. The current dust-up is over naming rights, with a group of lawmakers hoping to rechristen the western span of the bridge in honor of former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Willie Brown remains a popular figure in the state Assembly, the house he led for nearly 15 years before being forced from office by term limits.

The city of Oakland is not yet able to sweep aside the debris left by Tuesday's earthquake, pick up the pieces and get on with life. So, much of the city's attention is still riveted on the tragic crumple of concrete and steel of the Cypress section of the Nimitz Freeway, where untold quake victims are still buried.